


The Wind Stuck in a Box

by islasands



Category: Better Than I Know Myself - Adam Lambert (Music Video)
Genre: M/M, Trouble In Paradise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-03
Updated: 2012-05-03
Packaged: 2017-11-04 19:16:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/397268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/islasands/pseuds/islasands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sauli senses that Adam is no longer altogether happy. But Sauli is a clear thinker, and even clearer in his feelings, and understands his man far more than he ever lets on.</p><p>The song is "I will Always Love You", written by The Cure and sung here by Adele.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wind Stuck in a Box

"I Will Always Love You"

  


Adele

  


Sauli tidied the house. He did it methodically, room by room. He opened windows and doors to let the sun in. Then he did the laundry, sorting things into piles of whites, colours, sheets and towels. All up the housework took two and a half hours. Then he showered.

He went outside and sat on one of the deckchairs by the pool. He stared at the far edge of the pool. It was an infinity pool, designed to spill infinitely from one of its sides into another pool below, creating the impression of a liquid horizon. He remembered how there was a time when people believed the earth was flat. They thought the sea fell off its edges and fell into a void. A picture of this, of the earth as a vast circular plate with water streaming over its rim and falling into space, appeared in his head. It gave him a queasy feeling in his stomach. It did not help when he changed the picture to one of a globe with water running around it and not falling off.

He went over the last sentences of their conversation before falling asleep last night.

“Are you unhappy,” he had asked.

“No,” Adam had replied.

“Then I will make my question different,” he had said. “Are you happy?” There had been a pause before Adam had looked him squarely, sadly, in the eye.

“No,” was his reply.

They didn’t talk. Instead he had held out his arms and let him fall asleep in them. It seemed the sensible thing to do. But Adam’s admission wasn’t news to him. For some time now he had felt his restlessness as a living presence in the house. And it wasn’t that they no longer had fun together, or talked for ages, or fucked with mutual tenderness and zeal. They still did all those things, but somehow they had come to feel like respite from something that was hard work, something taxing. He watched a leaf lying motionless on the mirror of the pool. An insect was floating next to it, its wings outspread, its long legs trailing. He leaned forward to inspect the pool more closely. There were quite a few creatures in there, dead and alive. One of the latter, a tiny orange ladybird was calmly sitting on the water as though it had nothing better to do. A mosquito nearby was floating on its side, its legs drawn up, so that it looked as though it had fallen asleep.

He suddenly wished he was swimming with his boyhood friends. Diving into his favourite swimming hole of all time, - a small forest lake that was so richly brown they called it the coca cola lake. He had always closed his eyes as he entered the water but opened them when he jack-knifed to the surface, for the water, once you were in it, was perfectly clear. He liked treading water and seeing how his body was a different colour under the water. It was a ghostly gold colour. He liked dipping his arms in it and seeing their white turn to gold. If the girls didn’t come the boys would swim naked. It was there that he had first kissed a boy, a kiss that he couldn’t help but remember as tasting of coca cola and even of being fizzy. They had only kissed once, and it had been more like lambs butting faces than human lips creating a real kiss, but it had been real enough to make the boy his enemy for the remainder of their school years. It had been a mystery to him back then. Not now.

The phone rang and he looked back at the house. He waited to see if he was going to be bothered answering it and when he wasn’t bothered he looked away, beyond the tremor of the pool’s horizon, to the sky. A cloud that looked like one a child would draw was moving slowly to the west. Other clouds, less perfectly cloudlike, were following. He sighed. He held out his hands and looked at them, turning them palm up, palm down a few times. He remembered kneeling in front of Adam and using those hands to hold his hips. He had beautiful hips and beautiful legs. He had looked up to tell Adam so, and Adam had ruffled his hair fondly. “I’m a shoebox on legs,” he had said, and the fondness of his touch had made Sauli bury his face in his pubic hair and reach around with his hands to hold Adam’s buttocks, and to not move, just not move, just close his eyes, Adam’s cock resting on his cheek, and be happy.

He stood up and stretched. He was meeting a friend for lunch. The phone rang again and this time he answered it.

“I miss you already,” said his voice.

“Perhaps you do,” Sauli said.

“What’s that supposed to mean, - “perhaps?”

“You are unhappy. So you don’t have to say you miss me.”

There was a long silence.

“I understand,” Sauli went on. “I am not worried.”

“What do you mean? What do you understand?” His voice sounded defensive.

“Well, I will tell you, and then I will hang up. I am late for lunch.”

“Tell me then.”

“I think this. I think you are used to wanting things you cannot have. And now you want something you _can_ have – it feels wrong. And the wrong feeling will either go away or it won’t.”

“And what exactly is this wrong feeling?”

“Boredom,” Sauli said cheerfully. “Like the wind, stuck in a box.”

Adam began to say something but Sauli cut him short. “No, that is all, Adam. I am going now. Go and do your work. I love you. I will always do it.”

He turned off his phone and went and got his jacket. As he locked the door he thought, “One day I will build a house for us. A holiday house. I’d like to do that.”

It was a chilly day in Los Angeles. He put his hands in his jacket pockets and hunched his shoulders. He wished he had worn a scarf. The cloud he had noticed earlier was still in view. It had hardly altered its shape. It almost looked silly, as though it was trying hard to be the perfect cloud. “As if it knows it’s there,” he thought to himself. He suddenly pictured Adam’s face, frowning at him, perplexed and annoyed. He smiled at the thought. Then he broadened the scope of his smile to include the big wide world. He felt calmly afloat in it like that ladybug on the pool. Tiny, orange, and with dots.

His phone beeped . A message had arrived. “Make no mistake about it, Sauli. You are mine.” was all it said. He didn’t reply. Not straight away. He returned the phone to his pocket and waited for his ride, enjoying the cold caress on his face of a light breeze that seemed to have come out of nowhere.

 


End file.
